By now, you may know I’m a fan of DIY’s Knitty Gritty. I like the show because I actually can learn techniques from it that I’ll use both in crochet and knitting.

Tonight, the topic was recycling garments either by frogging (they didn’t use the term on the show, I was disappointed), or just embellishing old knitted garments. There were techniques for adding knitting to fabric garments too which could work easily for crochet (i.e. use embroidery thread to put a blanket stitch edge around a hem, then pick up stitches and knit or crochet a decorative edge). So you could, for example, take a fabric t-shirt and add a crocheted skirt, turning it into a funky dress.

By the way, the guest on the show was Knitty’s Kristi Porter, it was the first time I’d seen someone from the world of online knitting on the show.

They also had Erika Knight talking up a new (?) yarn line from Rowan called R2. What do you know about it? Let me know.

Technorati Tags: crochet knitting recycling

Blossom Baby Hat, originally uploaded by plainsight.

Please click on the Lulu link to purchase the pattern. It’s $4.00 and you’ll be able to download it immediately after purchase.

Thank you to my testers for their input and suggestions with this pattern. I would appreciate any comments from anyone else who tries it–and if you send me a picture, I’ll post it here on the blog.

This was also my submission for the loobylu.com Month of Softies May Flowers Challenge!

Technorati Tags: crochet pattern

I’ve just finished reading Kids Crochet : Projects for Kids of All Ages by Kelli Ronci. It’s a lovely hardcover book designed to teach children to crochet.

The organization is simple and straightforward. Ms. Ronci discusses materials and tools before moving on to skills. Each skill explained (including the chain stitch) has an attractive product to go with it. (Glue chains around a vessel to decorate it, wrap a present or wear chains as bracelets.) Other projects include a neck cozy, crochet tool pouch (a historic first project from the early days of crochet) accessories like bags, scarves, and headbands. My favorite projects in the book are the round pillows embellished with cheerful snails and butterflies. The only project I’m not fond of is the sweater. It’s bulky and shapeless (I assume to make it fast and easy to make), but if a child is going to spend a lot of time on a project, I would want her to love the result and want to wear it.

The yarns used are mid-priced and readily available online and from many local yarn stores. They include Brown Sheep, Tahki Cotton Classic and Cascade 220.

The illustrations are clear and attractive and the photographs have a boy and girl-next-door appeal. (I love the pictures of boys crocheting, I was pleasantly surprised this year how many young boys came to learn knitting and crochet at our local library.)

What I like most about this new book is that as the cover says, there are “projects for kids of all ages,” –stylish patterns any new or more experienced crocheter might want to make.

Have you read or used this book? Let me know what you think by using the comments link below.

Technorati Tags: crochet book review

A student of mine told me yesterday, if she takes a class and doesn’t make any mistakes, she’s almost disappointed. She has a great additude about the learning process: she sees mistakes as a way to learn a new technique or method. If she gets it just right the first time and never has to rip anything out to redo, she figures, at home, she’ll encounter a problem and not know how to fix it.

I think with a medium like crochet, ripping out is just part of the process. You rip for mistakes, for miscounts, or if you just want to make a row or round look better. If you have this additude, it shouldn’t frustrate you or feel like your being stalled or slowed down by doing things over–you work it in to the time it takes to make an object.

cestinhos de sacos plásticos, originally uploaded by Catrela.

I stumbled upon these great crocheted bowls made from plastic bags when I was searching crochet on technorati. I’ve been wondering myself what else you could make with plastic bag crochet. How about a bath mat?

Pins and Needles, the local yarn shop in Princeton, NJ where I teach crochet, has asked me to create a shrug pattern. I worked up a sample for my daughter Selma with yarn from my stash before starting on the “real thing” using their Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk. Here’s the result:

The Alpaca version will be 3/4 length sleeves. I think shrugs are so fun! They look awesome on, and they’re almost as easy to make as a scarf. It can be a great beginner project, or you could spice it up using an intricate stitch pattern. Selma is excited about it because she’s not allowed to wear sleeveless tops to school, but with the shrug, now she can.

My brother is a programmer in silicon valley. He keeps me up-to-date on all things digital. The latest great thing come my way is a site called del.icio.us Registering is free–there are no ads it’s completely non-commercial.

It’s just a really amazing way to catalog and keep track of your links. You can bookmark pages you like, as with any link list, but then you categorize your links using “tags” instead of hierarchical photos. Here’s where the magic starts: I tag something crochet. Someone else comes along and browses in del.icio.us on “crochet” they can see my links and anyone elses links with the same tag! When you bookmark a page, you can also see how many people have already bookmarked that page–it’s an instant popularity index.

Another great feature is, del.icio.us uses RSS just like blogs to. So you can subscribe to your del.icio.us feed or someone elses, and using a complementary site site called RSS Digest you can post a dymamic list of links on your blog or any other web page, pulled from your del.icio.us tags of choice and updated automatically as often as you specify.

Well–I know this all sounds very technical–but it was easy and fun to set up, and now you can instantly see where I’ve surfed on the crochet superhighway just by looking at my always up-to-date link list.

Don’t worry… I have a great shrug to show off later!

Look what’s new on the bookshelf this month– Melissa Leapman’s Cool Crochet: 30 Hot, Fun Designs To Crochet And Wear: another of the “new generation” of crochet books diffusing the myth that crochet is old, stogey, or lace-ridden. The greatest thing about these designs is that they fit–no shapeless or boxy sweaters. These are all women’s garments and accessories, and there’s a nice variety. She’s got a great hoodie, a georgeous top with bell cuffs in a shell design, halter tops, and even a string bikini.

I appreciate that she uses yarns in a variety of price ranges, from Classic Elite to Lion Brand to TLC’s Amore. The patterns are written in sizes from small to XXX Large. The projects vary in scope–there’s a crocheted necklace made with sterling silver wire and beads and there are a couple of nice bags and hats. It looks like a large portion of the yarns run on the lightweight side, i.e. DK and sportweight yarns and smaller D or E hooks.

Many of the designs are in the intermediate to advanced level, in fact none of the designs are at the true beginner level. (There’s a beautiful intarsia sweater which I may just have to make even though I hate to weave in ends!) The instructions are well laid out with helpful tips scattered throughout the book (including a technique for minimizing the holes between turning chains and the first stitch of a double crochet row). The large format of the book allows for big type and lots of helpful, colorful pictures, including, in most cases pictures of stitch detail.

I saw Melissa on The Knitty Gritty this week demonstrating cool knitted edges. She’s got a great eye for design and she’s good at teaching concepts and techniques.

I’ve been trying to find cool patterns for about 6 balls of bulky yarn I have lying around my stash. And it’s frustrating trying to search when the term “bulky” can describe such a wide range of gauges.

Wouldn’t it be cool if gauge descriptions were standardized–i.e. always stated in 10 cm. square with a specific syntax, so when you were surfing the web for patterns for a certain yarn, you could just google a gauge and bring up a list of patterns? Conceivably, with XML, there could be metadata tags specific to knitting and crochet that would allow for even more robust searching…

Here’s my latest finished project. Riffing on my bib pattern, I made this little newborn vest for my soon-to-be born nephew. It’s meant to be reversible (i.e. either the red or yellow side can be in front).